In China, relatives of Asiana passengers anxiously await news

Jul. 7, 2013
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Passengers of China Airlines who were diverted from San Francisco wait for buses to take them to hotels outside Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday. / Jay L. Clendenin, AP

by Calum MacLeod, USATODAY

by Calum MacLeod, USATODAY

The crash-landing of Asiana flight 214 at San Francisco-Oakland International Airport Saturday sparked a desperate wait for news for relatives of passengers in China, where the flight originated in Shanghai.

Chinese diplomats said the 141 Chinese citizens on board included a teacher and 34 high school students, state news agency Xinhua reported.

Chinese students flying abroad have become an increasingly common global phenomenon in recent years as the nation's dramatic economic growth and opening up creates more families that have the means to send children overseas to study -- and at ever younger ages.

One of the first indications those high school students had survived the crash came from Chinese social media as a fellow survivor posted updates from the scene. Xu Da, an executive with the online giant Taobao, based in its home city of Hangzhou, wrote a series of posts, sent from his iPhone, on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo micro-blogging service.

"It took half an hour from landing to evacuation," he wrote. "The passengers and rescuers were both very calm. No one was shouting, everything was orderly, and I felt we had already been evacuated for a while when the fire grew larger, so I was extremely surprised to hear that two were dead," he wrote.

Many Weibo users posted online messages expressing hopes for the safety of passengers.